


One Fine Day

by Lestradesexwife



Series: Prompt fills and Random Plot Bunnies. [10]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Use, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Post Reichenbach, References to Suicide, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, nothing redeeming about this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-05 07:04:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lestradesexwife/pseuds/Lestradesexwife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is broken after Sherlock's suicide. His coping mechanisms aren't always healthy.<br/>Molly can't bear the weight of the secret.<br/>John doesn't believe her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Fine Day

**Author's Note:**

> Written entirely in antidiogenes. So thanks to all, monster, provocatrixxx, evith and aria, dee and atienne. There are others I'm sure.
> 
> As always un-beta'd and only generally brit-picked. Glaring errors or omissions are to be recorded so that they may be rectified. (Please, really please)

He had to go home, eventually, he stayed away as long as he could, but first Harry’s couch then Greg’s had become unbearable. Harry was just too soft, she tiptoed around him until he shouted at her, and then she almost started drinking to balance herself out again. John had caught up to her before she got to the off-sales and told her he was going, she had cried on his shoulder and let him walk her home. Greg meant well, and John appreciated it... but he could see the strain of having him there wear away at Greg’s patience. The inquiry into Sherlock’s cases went from bad to worse and Greg needed space from the whole thing.

So John was home, sitting in his chair, staring at an empty space. Once he arrived back at 221b he knew that he would stay. That all of Sherlock’s things would stay in their places, barring what was hazardous and the science equipment that Mrs. Hudson had boxed up from the kitchen. His feet curled into the carpet, digging roots into the flooring, trying to hold himself still and be a part of the place that had been their home. He sat until the room darkened, rose when the sun stained the room grey. 

Moving through the flat on marionette strings, making tea, taking showers and changing his clothes. Holding himself still as much as possible, avoiding touching things, holding in his anger when Mrs. Hudson shifts parts of Sherlock’s memory when she dusts. When the bills come he pays them, there always seems to be money in his account, despite his being unable to take shifts at the surgery. Sometime later the bills stop coming in Sherlock’s name, John still pays them, but doesn’t bring them upstairs any longer. In the flat nothing changes.

When he can’t breathe any more of the air in the flat he walks, gets lost in London. Sometimes he retraces the steps of old cases, sometimes he walks until he finds somewhere he has never been before.

Mike calls, asks him to apply for a teaching position at Bart’s. John laughs, fills out the application anyway. Mike calls again and congratulates him, John thinks that the hiring committee must have been bribed by Mycroft. Wonders if it was a bribe or a threat, and if Mycroft is punishing him for throwing him out of the funeral.

The course is basic, as basic as med school can be, all John needs to do is read from the textbook and make sure the bright young things don’t mix up the pituitary and adrenal glands. The classroom is on the far side of the building. He has no reason to use that entrance, but he does everyday, has the taxi drop him off in the same place. He looks up, waits and never sees anything but sky. Then he walks over the spot, turns back and heads to the bay, walks through nearly all of the hospital to get to his classroom. Reverses the process every night when his office hours are finished. 

He tells Ella that he does it to remind himself, that he can’t stop. Until one day he doesn’t need to anymore. His path becomes the shortest distance between two points, he stops taking cabs, thinks about buying a bicycle instead. He never does, but he takes the tube and walks the rest of the way, making up the time spent inside the hospital with time spent in the air of London.  
He sees Greg, sometimes, and they talk of rugby, movie stars and other things that aren’t Sherlock. The paper retracts portions of what they said about Sherlock, the mad genius part stays the same. There is no proof that Sherlock orchestrated everything, but he was clever and hated enough that no proof of innocence will ever stop the rumor mill. John understands when Greg holds himself at a distance from John. John is tainted, the only part of Sherlock that remains mobile, and therefore dangerous. Greg survived, position intact, the cases Sherlock solved remained closed because regardless of who planned it all the criminals actually did commit the acts. 

John doesn’t see Mycroft, doesn’t even see the swivel of the CCTV cameras. At the time it seemed fitting, the whispered threats to Sherlock’s arch-enemy. John allowed the topping up of his bank account, since the money didn’t actually have Mycroft’s picture on it yet. Most likely it was hubris on John’s part, if Mycroft was still watching him there was precious little John could do to stop him. 

John worked, slept and ate when he was supposed to. He could make conversation with students, or at least fake interest long enough that they would be satisfied and leave him alone. The people he knew stopped looking at him with pity in their eyes. He allows the current of other people to pull him along, gathers new people-he-knows around him. They are all still at a remove, most people are too polite to ask if he is the same Watson from the news. He stares down one student who asks during class, until the student apologises and leaves the room. When John gets a notice the next day that a student has dropped the class, he can’t be bothered to feel bad about it.

He doesn’t remember what he was looking for the day he finds Sherlock’s little vial of morphine and a frankly ridiculous old fashioned syringe. John puts them down on the coffee table, stares at them in the weak winter sunlight. He has the entire two weeks over Christmas to himself, Harry is going to Spain with Clara on some “No everything is fine now, we are back together,” retreat. Mrs. Hudson is in Sussex visiting the children of her new beau. 221 is still and silent. He leaves the vial on the table and goes out to Tesco, returns with what he hopes are sufficient supplies. He turns off his phone and locks the doors to the flat. 

He’s been in Sherlock’s room before, and since the fall. He doesn’t like to linger in here but he can’t do this in his own room. He locks this door as well, creating as many barriers to the outside world as he can. The room is dark, stale and still feels as though Sherlock will burst in at any moment. John sits on the side of the bed and opens the box of syringes he wrote himself a prescription for. He knows Sherlock was clean, but the monstrosity he used will leave scars, never mind track marks. John sighs as the ten milligram dose he draws for himself doesn’t even register against the level of the vial. He has taken morphine before, he can probably increase the dose, but he doesn’t know if Sherlock had improved upon this vial. 

He settles back into Sherlock’s bed, breathing in dust and exhaling the last vestiges of his best friend. The morphine, and yes it is just morphine, settles over him like a warm blanket. He remembers in time to pull the needle from his arm and drop it onto the side table before he slips fully under the warmth. He doesn’t sleep, but the swirl and fall of dust particles against the flow of his breath becomes something worthy of his focus. When the warmth recedes he ups the dose to 20 milligrams, this puts him to sleep eventually, but he drifts for a while first, content to see the level in the bottle dip as he draws the larger dose. 

He’s decided to use it all in the first week. Thinks that he should be able to finish it, and give himself the second week to detox. He thought about saving some, hoarding it against a time when he might need it. The prospect frightens him, it would be too easy to give up, to allow himself the escape. So he will use it now, enjoy it and then suffer the consequences. His gun was seized when Sherlock was arrested, he supposes that Mycroft prevented any difficulties from arising there. The roof at Bart’s is impossible. This temptation can be overcome, he can absorb this and it will be like having a part of Sherlock with him. This part of Sherlock will make him whole, or not.

He makes it, upping the dose until he shakes with need and the bottle is completely dry. When he comes down the last time he forces himself up out of Sherlock’s bed and into the shower. He can already hear the demon in the back of his mind. “You are a doctor, you can get more. You have a prescription pad in your desk.” His shoulders shake as the hot water scalds him, the voice is Sherlock’s, warm rich baritone telling him that everything will be fine, he is in control. When the water starts to run cold he goes up to his room. Locks that door against the outside world and curls up in his own bed.

Three days later the shaking stops and John picks up his cane and limps back down the stairs.When Mrs. Hudson returns in the new year she doesn’t comment, just fixes him a cup of tea. John dumps the rest of the syringes at the hospital in the sharps disposal, but the empty vial takes up residence in his pocket. The tremor in his left hand is soothed now by running his fingers over the lid. This danger has replaced chasing after criminals, and it makes him glad of the limp.

John doesn’t see Molly Hooper until one day he does. He is coming home from Tesco, his cane marking a staccato rhythm against the pavement. She is waiting curled on the front steps of 221, she looks small and pale with her knees pulled up tight against her chest. John thinks she must have been crying, but she is calm now, focused in a way that John has never seen her before. He brings her inside, offers her tea and a banana because it is the only food he has that doesn’t require preparation. She agrees to tea, but withdraws even further into herself when John brings it out to her. 

He looks around, realising that everything in the flat is the same. That to people who aren’t him it must seem crazy to still be living in a flat that looks more like a museum after all this time. He sits down hard in his chair, sloshing tea over his hand but he doesn’t feel it. It has been a year, Molly has come on the anniversary. John hasn’t been keeping track of time, existing from one day to the next without putting them together to make up a year. He sets the mug down and rubs his hands over his face. He can’t speak, and isn’t sure what he would say if he could. Molly has come here, a year after Sherlock died, John was supposed to be his best friend and he hadn’t even remembered this.

Suddenly Molly is speaking, a rush of words that make no sense. Rubber balls, snipers and laundry trucks, Jim’s body in Sherlock’s grave. Pints of frozen blood, the homeless network, and her own vow to give Sherlock whatever he needed. 

“Molly, I saw him jump. You did the autopsy.”

Tears, begging John to believe her. Apologies for lying, for telling him that Sherlock had died. She thought she could keep his secret, she had no idea it would take this long. She sees John at the hospital. Saw him when he still went to look up, sees him limping now. She is broken, he’ll be furious with her when he comes back. She only had to do one thing but she couldn’t hold it in any longer. She’d been to the roof this morning, thinking maybe he would be there. John’s heart races, and his bile rises, guilt flooding his mind and body with imagined pain. He should have known that this woman would be in pain, he hadn’t even thought of her since that day. He hadn’t thought of anyone but himself, and she had been quietly falling apart. 

He crosses the room, soothes her, tells her that of course he believes her. That Sherlock would want her to tell him the truth, now he can go find Sherlock and help him. Make sure he is alright, give him a thrashing for making her worry. He feels sick at how easy it is to lie to her, how badly he wants to believe the things he is saying. She curls up in his arms and falls asleep, he checks her pulse, concerned that she has taken something, but it is strong and slow beneath his fingers, she is only exhausted. John slides off the couch and covers her with the blanket from his chair, holds his breath until he is sure that she is sleeping soundly.

He chews his lip, wondering if he should call Lestrade, decides to call an ambulance instead. He’s a doctor, but she will need an evaluation. She might go in easier if Lestrade takes her, but John is selfish, doesn’t want to see Greg today. Now that the day has been brought to his attention he just wants it to be over, wants to curl up in Sherlock’s bed and sleep until it is no longer today. He goes downstairs to call for the ambulance, blocking any means for Molly to escape. Making sure his voice is quiet and low so as not to wake her. 

It is ugly when they come for her. He tries to wake her gently, keeps his voice calm when he tells her he thinks she should go to the hospital. She is slow at first, sleep still clinging to her, then devastated as the realization dawns. It takes all of them in the end, the two ambulance attendants and himself to get her onto the gurney, she is screaming and cursing, tries to bite him when he puts his hand to her temple to soothe her. She settles then, and he doesn’t know if it is the sedative the tech gives her or the cold look in his eyes. He declines the offer to go along with her in the ambulance and calls for a taxi instead. At the hospital he tells her doctor about the roof, that they lost a close friend last year. She seems convinced that he is still alive, he is worried about her. And he is, he really truly is worried about her. His hand brushes against the empty vial in his pocket and he is worried about himself. 

He goes home again. But he doesn’t sleep in Sherlock’s bed, he takes off his shoes and socks and roots himself in his chair. It is only then that he realizes that he hasn’t used the cane all afternoon.

He doesn’t see Sherlock Holmes, until one day he does. It is two years later, not exactly but John still hasn’t been marking the time. He should be gaunt, a walking skeleton, but if anything he looks more robust than ever. His hair is shorter, the shape of his jaw has matured and he is very much alive. John punches him, turns on his heel and leaves, doesn’t stop to see if Sherlock gets up again. He is heaving in air and fighting against the need to vomit as he stands on the street and hails a cab.

He knows where Molly is, has been keeping tabs on her treatment as much as he can. Hasn’t visited, after the first disastrous attempt. Molly had been nearly catatonic, small and so pale she was almost translucent. She’d turned away from him and started to cry quietly when he came into her room. Her doctors said that she hadn’t spoken to anyone for several days after his visit. They had called him to tell him that she had improved, she’d moved to a group home, but she is still fairly heavily medicated. 

John stands in front of the house. Looks at the door and can’t breathe, he has ruined this woman, he has no idea what to do to make amends. He’s standing there, half turned away from the house when Molly opens the door. She must have seen him from the window, she steps out tentative, so very like herself that John almost collapses there on the walk.

“John?”

“Molly, I’m so sorry.”

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently I... well... the last story had a happy ending. I seek balance in the force.


End file.
